Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Back to the HOMEPAGE

“I returned to court 2PM, was asked why I was there, said to get your information and all records; they said I am not a principal, get them from the attorney. Went to see her same evening, she's 100 km away on the one of two evenings a week she's in the office; come back Mon 1700 to 1900. Appeal reaffirmed sentence.”

Shume

You know there is nothing like having a little free time and being able to relax a little. You never really know exactly how bad off you are until you actually get some relief from the noise. I think that we indeed all need to stop and smell the roses from time to time. I have always been of the opinion that people are quite a bit more fragile than what it is we like to believe of ourselves. The last few days have been a bit of a revelation for me in this regard; I guess there is nothing like getting away from the noise for a bit to allow for some perspective.

The word in Russian for what I am referring to as noise is “shume”, it sort of means that there is some constant and distracting noise that has no particular correlation to any purposeful thing in one’s life, though it is nevertheless there. New York makes a pretty good shume. Any big city does. For that matter, any city does really. And I think that what happens is that people in response to the shume, begin to tune out the world by creating and even louder internal shume of their own. Or they buy those radios with the ear plugs. Maybe this shows itself in some rather loud talking or perhaps only a metabolic change that allows for all of one’s nervous energy to, hopefully lead them past the ever invasive shume of the outside world. It is self protection. And it is pretty normal for us I guess to be doing this all the time.

Well, I have been getting away from the shume a lot lately and I can feel the muscles in my neck and back relaxing after a while. I find that this particular muscular reaction is actually an endless fending off of the shume. And what is more, I found that it had been there for quite some time. And it is funny, but this fighting off the shume becomes so natural, this fighting off the shume of the world, that after a while you don’t even notice that you are doing it until you happen to find yourself a moment away from it. It doesn’t take much: Just a moment when there is a lack of invasions to ones senses, just a moment without the shume. I mean, you just suddenly understand that you can stop fighting it because that thing that you have been fighting is simply not there any more. I mean, all of sudden you ask yourself: Why am I so nervous all the time? And in that moment you realize that you’ve been spending all this energy fighting off some particular amount of obnoxious noise and that it has been draining all of your energy. It is like one of those hippie revelation the first time you let it go. Have you ever been experienced? Well I have! And let me tell you, it is better without. Absolutely.

I was explaining this to the kid. He had asked why his grandma was always yelling at him. I told him that if he took a look at where she lives he would understand. There are all of these cars and people around ll of the time. The air is bad and everything is so loud. The woman can’t hear herself think. Been this was for fifty years. The kid didn’t understand it at first. I had to take him to the forest. The air is better in the forest. It’s quiet. Just the birds and the hum of the bugs and maybe a frog or 50 if there is a pond. And the sound crickets…

Yea you can open you ears and simply allow these wonderful peaceful sounds to come right into your brain, no defenses necessary… no need of screaming and yelling. Yea, the shume sucks the life right out of you. It is good when it is gone.

So you know that the courts agreed with the original decision regardless of anything I had to say publicly or privately. They just bother to listen to one damned thing I had to say for over two years. Been in my life for two years and they have taken it upon them selves to say that they were right I being there. These are Warsaw people don’t you know. Lots of shume in Warsaw. Way shumy place. Way, way shumy place.

And you know, I didn’t like living in Warsaw. I mean, it was kidnapping and it was not like I had a lot of choices about being there but all in all, there was all of that shume all of the time; crappy drivers, nervous people- and all of that lying all the time. Lies are pretty much poster children for shume. Lies make normal conversation into shume. Ever noticed that? Like, you are trying to speak to someone and they just lie to you, and all of a sudden the muscles in your neck and back start to tighten up as a defense for the pain from the noise of having to listen to it. All of that energy it takes to keep out the shume, to protect yourself from it.

Maybe that’s why vampires bite you one the neck: All of that tension requires extra blood in the region. Yea, I know there is a vain there.

Lies. And you know, they have created an extra shume for me in my life for two years now. They have done it this way: They say that there will be this noise from them in your head and it will be there until you pay their policeman some bribe money to make it go away. This is of course blackmail and extortion, but they are supposedly people of some position and all. Yes, you just pay and supposedly, they agree to take the shume away. Of course, that they are lying about this is the first place does make taking the deal seriously a little shumy. Extortionists are like pornographers in that way, selling something fake to take the place of something that people want.

Do you know what the actual definition of a crime is? In order for there to be a crime you need three things: You need an action, you need damage as a result of the action, and you need that the action was done knowingly and intentionally to create said damage. This is the truth. Well you know what? These people are criminals. Let me say that again in the hopes that the truth of these words will have just the slightest bit more weight and relevance: These people are all criminals. And, as all criminals do, they are sucking the life out of the people they are supposedly there to protect. I am talking about the Polish judicial system. They are not a joke, as the people of Warsaw like to think of them, they are an insult to the words justice, truth, honor, privilege… And, in my opinion they simply must be a product of the endless, mind-numbing shume that their town makes. And in the case of Warsaw, there is the extra added weight, if you are a private citizen there, that comes with knowing, absolutely knowing that the people in charge are liars, cheats and thieves. It’s like a built-in cancer. The place is a shume machine. And apparently, they are not above using their shume to help them steal some money. I bet they think this is all so very clever…

Of course (!) they couldn’t hear all of those words I kept throwing out over the internet and turning in to the court. They can’t hear anything!!! The shume has them deaf as doorknobs.

Well, let me tell you something: Life in general is better without all the shume in it. I could make some general statement about what sort of shume comes along with a world with 6,000,000,000 people in it and how hard it will be to get away from all of it and about how much shume we will have to learn to endure with seven, eight or nine billion of us roaming around looking for something to eat. But that is not the point I want to make. What is the point, other than all of this labeling and naming I am doing, is that I am trying to make an honest recommendation for those people who are reading my words because they are interested in potential tourism in the region. Here is my recommendation for you: You don’t need Warsaw. Is that clear and to the point enough? There is nothing there to see or hear. It is not interesting or real. There is nothing of value there. The place is run by liars and cheats and thieves, and they have no regard for life or people or the truth… I don’t know what you think you would be looking forward to insofar as spending those hard earned vacations dollars in eastern Europe is concerned, but I would think you would be wise to avoid places that offer nothing more than a lot of shume. I like to think that my opinion about this carries some weight. I have stamps from just under thirty of this world’s countries in my passport and I have been trying to live a reasonably normal life in the area for two years now. So I think what I have to say should be taken as being worthy of being heard. Wanna hear it again? We don’t need Warsaw. You don’t need to go there. What you are looking for is available in much more attractive and interesting packages than Warsaw has to offer elsewhere in other countries that do a far, far better job of representing themselves. Don’t go to Poland; they just take your money there. That’s all they care about. That’s all they do. They just take your money and don’t give back anything of value in return. And that my friend, is the essence of shume. I’ve been to Poland, and they stole everything they could find. That’s what’s called Being Had!

Remember where you heard it from and who told you. My name is Adam Goodman and I say fuck Poland and all of their empty noise.

As Spike Lee would say: That’s my joint for the day.

Shume…

And you know, I had not noticed but my blog last time was my 100th addition to this Being Had: The story space. Whoopee!!!!!

More soon.